Cancer Alliance
Membership Committee Meeting Summary

May 15, 2008, 10-11 a.m. 

Attendees: Anna Ourada, Patti Swanson, Marie Tran, Lisa Stephens, Nicole Bennett Engler, Brian Rank, Warren Larson, Ken Joslyn

Agenda Items

1.  Overview of new members:

• Hope Chest for Breast Cancer – orientation completed by Anna Ourada and Linda Sershon
• Angel Foundation – orientation completed by Nicole Bennett Engler
• CaringBridge – orientation scheduled for 6/3/08 by Nicole Bennett Engler and Matt Flory
• Minnesota Public Health Association – orientation to be scheduled by David Simmons
• Mid Minnesota Family Medicine Center – orientation to be scheduled by Lisa Stephens

2.       Member in-reach letter discussion

We may want to consider enlisting support from SC members at the upcoming meeting to

help with organizational follow-up. We have about 50 members who we will be sending
this letter to, so if we do not want to tackle the follow-up ourselves, we could ask SC
members to commit to organizations that they may have connections with to try to help re-
engage members.

After discussion, the committee decided to send the member in-reach letter via mail, including a postage paid return postcard for organizations to communicate whether they would either like to become more involved or opt out of membership. The committee recommended putting all task force and project team information on the second page to help make the first page’s “hook” appear less cluttered, and including leadership within the request for a meeting to make sure that leaders are informed of Alliance membership. The committee also recommended enlisting Steering Committee assistance in writing hand-written notes on letters to organizations that members are connected with. This could easily be done during the break.

Action Item: Nicole Bennett Engler to share copies of the in-reach letter; pass around the list of in-reach letter recipients for Steering Committees to sign up to assist with hand-written note at the upcoming Steering Committee meeting. For those organizations who do not respond, the same Steering Committee members will be requested to follow-up with their respective organizations. 

3.   Communicating with Alliance members   

Does anyone have any strategies that they may recommend for better communicating with

current members? Current strategies include:

1. quarterly newsletter (may be worth our investment to explore sending the newsletter)
2. special events as they arise
3. year end report
4. ongoing Web content
5. annual Cancer Summit
6. monthly update

However, it’s hard to gauge whether or not these strategies are effective. We do not necessarily have to think in terms of communications, but what overall strategies we could adopt to help current members keep a better pulse on the Alliance.

The committee discussed additional communications and marketing strategies to help engage Alliance members. Warren Larson suggested exploring word-of-mouth marketing, and enlisting the Steering Committee in support of this concept. We could potentially introduce word-of-mouth marketing during an upcoming Steering Committee meeting.

Brian also suggested further exploring viral or social networking on the Web site. He cited the attached New York Times article, “People Like Me” discussing creating social networking on the Web.  

4.       Next meeting: Thursday, July 17, from 9-10 a.m.